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Muslim hotel owner discriminated against Jewish group, jury finds
From the LA Times
The Hotel Shangri-La in Santa Monica and its owner discriminated against members of a Jewish organization at a charitable event two years ago, a Santa Monica Superior Court jury determined Wednesday.
The case was brought by young leaders of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, who had gathered on the afternoon of July 11, 2010, at the Art Deco hotel. Soon after their party got underway around the pool, hotel staff and security guards began telling group members to remove their literature and banners, to get out of the pool and hot tub, and to stop handing out T-shirts, according to legal documents and testimony.
The employees said they were following the orders of Tehmina Adaya, the hotel owner — a Muslim woman of Pakistani descent.
The jury heard deposition testimony of a former employee, Nathan Codrey, who said Adaya repeatedly used profanity as she insisted that the event stop. “If my [family finds] out there’s a Jewish event here, they’re going to pull money from me immediately,” she said, according to the testimony
The jury found that Adaya and the hotel violated the Unruh Act ( California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which bars hotels and other businesses from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, color or religion) and inflicted emotional distress. The panel awarded statutory damages of more than $1.2 million. A hearing on punitive damages is scheduled for Thursday.
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